THE LAST ROMAN
GALLA PLACIDIA
The 5th century is remembered as a time of Roman decline and fall, but through Galla Placidia’s eyes it looks very different
Written by Emma Southon
When we talk about the Roman Empire in the 5th century CE, we usually find ourselves using words like ‘decline’ and ‘fall’ an awful lot. Traditional narratives focus away from the city of Rome and make it appear as degraded and powerless and finally violated by its sack in 410 CE. Constantinople was ascendant; Rome lost its lustre. If we shift our perspective a tiny bit, though, away from battles, we can see that a different story can be told about 5th century Rome and the western empire. By looking at Galla Placidia, empress of Rome, we can see through her how brightly Rome still shone in the lives and imaginations of those who lived at the end of the empire.
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Galla Placidia was born somewhere around 390 CE, the only daughter of emperor Theodosius the Great and his second wife. Historians termed her father ‘great’ because he was the last to rule the whole Roman empire alone, east and west, under the power of a single man. Upon his death, when Placidia was about five, his two sons inherited a throne each. Arcadius took the throne in Constantinople while Honorius, aged just ten, settled in Ravenna to rule the west. Galla Placidia travelled to the west where Honorius set up court in Ravenna, but she chose to live in Rome. And there she stayed through sieges and famines, until 410 CE when Alaric led his Gothic army into the city and kidnapped Galla Placidia as a hostage.
EXPERT BIO
DR EMMA SOUTHON
Dr Emma Southon is a historian and author specialising in the history of Ancient Rome. Her previous books include Agrippina: Empress, Exile, Hustler, Whore (2018) and A Fatal Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum (2020). She is also the co-host of History Is Sexy with Janina Matthewson.
Placidia was the only member of the imperial family to witness the epoch-ending breach of Rome’s walls and the only imperial woman to ever be taken into the custody of a foreign enemy. As refugees poured out of Italy and the shockwaves reverberated around the empire, Galla Placidia, aged maybe 20, was carried off into Gaul by the army who had been terrifying the Romans for decades.
It was, perhaps, a surprise to her to learn that Alaric’s Goths were not monstrous, semi-human ‘barbarians’ but were simply people who desperately wanted Roman legitimacy and had very similar goals to her brothers. When Alaric died and his famously handsome brother, Athaulf, took over leadership, Placidia shocked the Roman world by uniting the Romans and Goths in marriage. As a wedding gift, Athaulf gave her 50 handsome men and a plate full of precious gems. Of course, we don’t know how Placidia felt about her new husband, the king of the Goths, but we do know that she ended the Gothic wars with her decision, and their marriage was celebrated by contemporaries as a ‘divine gift’. The emperors of Rome and Constantinople now counted Athaulf as their brother-in-law. And the union was sealed even tighter when, in 415 CE, Galla Placidia gave birth to her first son, baby Theodosius, the first and only imperial Romano-Goth.